Thursday, January 13, 2005

Throw Down in Vancouver

Where will you be on Thursday, March 31 from 10:30 am to 11:45 am? If you're in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the AWP conference you should come see Jake Adam York, Adam Clay, Matt Henriksen, Dan Albergotti, and myself discuss the difficulties of founding and editing journals when there is no shortage of journals and when the electronic journal is, though not new, still not altogether trusted.

I'm a little nervous you won't come and see us. We have a lot, a lot, of competition in that particular time slot. Here's out it breaks down:

After reading the details of each one, and excluding our own discussion, here is how I would rank the ones I'd want to be at:

1. 20
2. 12
3. 2
4. 16
5. 13

#20 is a question I've always been invested in. My poems, despite being somewhat unorthodox, disjointed in their narrative at times, and surprising I hope, tend to fall on the narrative side of things. I've struggled with this a bit, mostly because I've had other poets/editors dismiss me because of this. Somehow, in some circles, narrative in poetry discredits the poem--as if it's too easy or something. I don't know. I get a lot of my ideas from short stories and this discussion, which is headed up by Maxine Kumin, will focus on that fine line between prose writers and poets and what we can learn from each other regarding narrative. So, someone will have to take good notes in that one and then share them with me. Deal?